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Category Archives: Other Art and Culture
A Fond Farewell to the Humble Twinkie
My cat Jasper loved Twinkies. Well…he sort of loved them. His favorite pastime was figuring out how to break into the box, wrestle out the individually wrapped twinkies, and bite at them through the plastic. At some point, my Mom had had enough. She took one out of the packaging and just gave it to Jasper. He took a few sniffs of the rounded pastry, looked at it quizzically, and went on his merry way. For Jasper, Twinkies were a chew toy, not a snack.
Maybe he was onto something. I shudder to think about the assorted sugary treats that I was shamelessly tantalized into buying as a kid. I consumed everything from Ghostbusters “Ectoplasm” Hi-C, to a dizzying assortment of candy-coated cereals, to fruit snacks that looked like my favorite cartoon characters and tasted like a cross between erasers and air fresheners. But Twinkies, if you’ll pardon the expression, took the cake.
Why I’m Secretly Kind of Excited About Hurricane Sandy
When I was a kid I used to “root” for storms.
It seems kind of crazy now, but I distinctly remember watching the crawl at the bottom of the T.V. screen anytime a storm was coming, hoping it would head my way. Growing up in Tornado Alley, this happened frequently enough to make it a regular event. I would sit there watching T.G.I.F., hear the familiar alarm clock-esque warning screech, and quickly scan the list of affected areas. Somehow, when our county was included in the latest Flash Flood Alert or “T-Storm Warning,” it was a badge of honor
It’s hard to explain why I was so excited by this. I think part of it has to do with the idea that I liked the feeling of being safe amidst the chaos. That impulse says a great deal about some of the inherent perversity that comes with privilege. I grew up with an unquestioned assumption of security. Storms were little more than exciting shows that I could watch through the back window in complete safety. Natural disasters were a terror I was aware of, but also immune from. Scenes of flooding and damage on the local news were only narrowly distinguished from thrilling clips from a disaster movie. It’s one of those early mindsets born from the ignorance of your own advantages that makes you look back and shudder.
Posted in Other Art and Culture
Tagged Applecarters, Hurricanes, Noah's Ark, Storms, Weather
8 Comments
The Princess is in Another Castle: Braid, Roger Ebert, and Whether Video Games Can Be Art
“Video games can never be art.” – Roger Ebert
I spent a long time trying to figure out how to judge art. I came to the conclusion, admittedly a bit of a cop out, that judging art is an individual, subjective process. Certainly critics, laymen, and others can reach a general consensus about what does or does not qualify as quality, but in the end, each person has to judge for themselves.
That said, Roger Ebert is dead wrong.
It takes a certain amount of bravado, even for a celebrated film critic, to declare that an entire medium can never reach the pinnacle of artistic merit. It’s easy to point to Ebert’s age and believe that he mistakes the old days of fun if story-bare games like Pacman and Donkey Kong for the immersive, in depth, and often narrative world of video games that exists today. But I think that lets Ebert off too easily. At base, anything that tells a story can not only be art; it can be high art, and Ebert ought to know that.
Anything that uses carefully crafted visuals to evoke a particular sense or emotion can be high art. Anything that envelops the audience in a character, in a world, and transposes their experiences into a grand fictional adventure can be high art. In the same way that a great novel crafts a compelling narrative, in the same way that great visual art compels with color and composition, in the same way that a celebrated film brings the viewer into another world, a great video game can reach those same artistic heights. In fact, video games are uniquely positioned to do all three.
Which brings us to Braid, the 2009 game from Jonathan Blow. Blow is the yin to Ebert’s yang, a man who believes wholeheartedly that video games can be art, but who is relentless in his critiques of the industry as it stands today for failing to live up to its potential. Braid is Blow’s biggest salvo in this fight, and his example to the world of what a video game can be.
The Ant and The Object
There was an ant, of no particular renown or distinction. He lived in an ant colony with his thousands of brothers and sisters. He, like many, spent most of the day venturing out into the world to retrieve food and building supplies for his colony. Early one morning, he came across an item so large, he couldn’t carry it alone. It was peculiar and unfamiliar. But something about it told him that it was extraordinary and would be useful to the colony.
The object was massive, and it was heavy, even for the strength of an ant. The ant called some of his siblings to help him lug it back to the colony. He couldn’t quite figure out what it was. Part of it was hard and molded. Part of it was shiny and gleamed in the sunlight above his head. Part of it was rubbery with little pads sticking out of it.
He and the others carried it back to the colony and laid it in front of his brothers and sisters. They all puzzled over what it could be. Various packs of ants were investigating the strange pieces and parts of the object. A group of the ants stood on top of a large circular pad at the top of the item. Suddenly, the entire colony floor was bathed in light, and a loud melody erupted from a collection of holes in the plastic.
The colony hummed with excitement. The ants swarmed all around the object as it showed an ever changing display of lights. They danced on its smooth silvery surface that reflected a million shades of a kaleidoscope. It captivated them, as they squirmed and shuffled from one mysterious surface to another. Then, as if by accident, the object began to rumble and roar. It shifted from one side of the colony floor to the other. In the tumult, it knocked a pile of ants onto a green pad near the mouth of the object that stopped the rumbling. In its place was a booming noise that the ants did not understand except to fear. But it was loud and clear in the small cavern of the colony.
No One’s Gonna Love You: Cee Lo Green vs. Band of Horses
Cee Lo Green, who covered the song "No One's Gonna Love You" by Band of Horses.
Recently, Cracked’s Robert Brockway wrote an article discussing cover songs that stole the show from the original. He concedes at the get-go that it’s a mission where the “rules are subjective and everybody hates each other by the time it’s over,” but the exercise is still a worthwhile one. As he describes it:
“The point is to think of a cover song that just completely stole the show from the original artist, not necessarily because of its quality, or arrangement, or performance, but because the cover has an intangible something that more fully embodies what the song should have been.”
There’s something I have always appreciated about cover songs. I grew up in a time where remixes were slowly becoming the well-populated domain of DIY DJ’s, and the internet featured a wealth of music and lyric repositories that made it easier than ever for people to put their own spin on a favorite song. The spirit of the aughts was to not only take the old and make it new again, but to make it personal.
Posted in Music, Other Art and Culture
Tagged Band of Horses, Cee Lo Green, Covers, Cracked, Remix Culture, The Eighties
8 Comments
Zombie Poetry
Today, the New York Times did a story about a new anthology of Zombie-related Poetry. While it’s a bit peculiar to think of flesh-eating monsters as a subject fit for bards and authors, there is certainly something artistically appealing about zombies. George Romero, the father of the modern day zombie film used them to represent prejudice, consumerism, xenophobia, and more. Indeed, as the Times article points out, there’s something about the idea of a mindless drone of a creature that lends itself to metaphor and symbolism. To that end, I thought I would take a crack at a piece of Zombie Poetry myself…
5 Unexpected Inconveniences of European Travel
Certain bumps in the road are expected when embarking on a European vacation. Jetlag is a pain; the language barrier is always tricky, and doing one’s best to enjoy, but not offend, the culture of another country can be a delicate tightrope walk. You plan your trip, read your guidebooks, and do your best to prepare for these foreseeable hurdles. Some difficulties, however, take you by surprise, and all you can do is scramble, improvise, and cope. These are inconveniences like…
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Posted in Other Art and Culture
Tagged AIr Conditioning, Bathrooms, Colosseum, Credit Cards, Euro, Europe, Florence, Italy, Madrid, Plaza Mayor, Restaurants, Rome, Spain, Termini Station, Travel, Uffizi Museum
3 Comments
Steve Jobs: It’s Hard to Mourn a Stranger
Steve Jobs died yesterday after a prolonged battle with pancreatic cancer. He was 56.
It’s sad when a vibrant man dies of cancer at the age of fifty-six, whether he is the C.E.O. of a multi-billion dollar company or just somebody’s father. Steve Jobs is no exception. Whatever one’s feelings about his life or his work, another human being has passed, and that is worth a moment of pause.
But as I read the lionizing facebook statuses and the glowing retrospectives recounting Steve Jobs’s life, I am puzzled by the emotional attachment to this man with whom few us had any real connection. I did not know Steve Jobs. I have never met Steve Jobs. He has had hardly any impact on my life beyond the iPod I purchased a number of years ago. Though his passing gives me a brief instant of sad reflection, I am otherwise largely unaffected.
Apparently, I am in the minority. And it’s not the first time.
Posted in Other Art and Culture
Tagged Apple, Celebrity, Death, iPad, iPhone, iPod, Michael Jackson, Pixar, Steve Jobs
5 Comments
The Top Five Terms Made Up By Yours Truly pt. 5: Applecarters
This is Part Five in our series of Five Terms Made Up By Yours Truly.
Check out Part One, Part Two, Part Three, and Part Four.
5. Applecarters
Definition – Individuals who inherently enjoy seeing the unexpected or unplanned happen, independently of the people or groups involved in these events.
The Story– The term “Applecarters” comes from an old expression. It refers to those who enjoying seeing what happens when something “upsets the apple cart.” In other words, these are folks who like to see the unusual or unanticipated occur. They want to see the contingencies that those in charge didn’t plan for or expect would come to pass. Basically, they enjoy it when things hit the fan.
The Guggenheim, Lee Ufan, and The Question of What Makes Great Art
Lee Ufan's "Silence Room"
“Art” is just something different – something hard to characterize or categorize. Even the law makes exceptions for it. Under typical contract law, the parties to the contract can have a “satisfaction clause.” This means that that the performing party has not legally fulfilled their obligation until the other party is satisfied with their work. There’s a catch, though. This “satisfaction” is tested objectively. That is to say, if the average person would be satisfied with the work, then the “satisfaction clause” has been fulfilled. This is true even if the actual person who made the contract is incredibly disappointed with the work performed.
There is, however, one big exception – contracts to create art. When it comes to paintings, portraits, and sculptures, the person who commissioned the work can reject each attempt until they receive something that fits their own personalized expectations. The reasoning behind the exception is that art is something so individual, so specific to the person seeking it, that the law cannot impose the same sort of generalized expectations that govern the typical sort of agreement for goods or services. As recognized even in the legal world, art is something apart.
Which begs the question – how do we reach any sort of consensus as to what makes great art, when art itself is so inherently subjective? From the curator deciding on the next exhibition for the Metropolitan Museum of Art, to the little girl picking out her Lisa Frank pencil box, everyone approaches expressive imagery with their own taste in what they find pleasant, moving, or appealing. In the face of such a wide diversity of not only perspectives on art, but of schools, movements, and varieties of art, how do we decide what deserves uniform praise, and what is merely one man’s preference?
